Truth in Government

43 former diplomats, intelligence officers and retired service chiefs have accused the Prime Minister of misleading voters over the Iraq war.

Howard's first defence is the usual personal attack, suggesting that they are all retired, weren't in office on sept 11 2001, and that "the world has changed" - implying they are not qualified to comment on the situation. Never mind that the list includes several former chiefs of the armed forces, several former diplomats to Iraq, and many senior government officials of the past. This is just ridiculous, and yet another insult to our intelligence.

And just to prove how rattled they government is, National Party MP De-Anne Kelly referred to them as "doddering daquiri diplomats" - which I admit is a nice piece of alliteration from the dippy dame de-anne (oops, sorry, I've slipped into personal insults.)

But then Howard gets to the argument proper:

"May I say to the 43 people who penned that letter in order to establish a charge of deception you have to prove that Government deliberately set out to mislead the Australian people and they have not done that Mr Speaker". Like Blair, he relies on a report saying that the government did not put pressure on the intelligence agencies, and that the intelligence agencies themselves were basically at fault.

Howard's assertion that it is necessary to prove that the government "deliberately set out to mislead" is really just trying to get off on a technicality. At the time, he flat out asserted that the reason for going in was not to depose Saddam, but to disarm Saddam. He then seized on the dodgy intelligence reports about WMDs and continued to push these reasons on us, suggesting they posed a immediate danger. At the time, there was plenty of reason to believe that although we did not know for sure whether there were still WMDs, the evidence was too thin to base an invasion on, and that there was good reason to allow the inspection process to continue for a lot longer. Hans Blix said that if the intelligence he was given was the best that they had, then what was the rest like? Howard first deceived himself; he then foisted his self deception onto the nation, choosing to believe only what he wanted to believe, in order to support his irrational actions.

I find it very annoying the way the government keeps insisting it was acting on the best understanding it had at the time and "had to make a decision" - as if that somehow justifies the decision. There was every possible reason not to be gung ho, there were other perfectably practical and feasible approaches to remove doubt about WMDs and if necessary disarm Iraq. And it all could have been done without setting back principles of international cooperation and dispute resolution by 50 years.